


Five Deaths (Laura Roslin)

by Rheanna



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: 5 Things, Alternate Universe, F/M, Female Protagonist, Gen, Wordcount: 10.000-30.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-01-31
Updated: 2005-01-31
Packaged: 2017-10-05 02:27:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/36800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rheanna/pseuds/Rheanna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Laura Roslin: five ways of living, five ways of dying.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Deaths (Laura Roslin)

**1\. Leader**

  
The planet is clearly visible from the porthole of Laura's stateroom on Colonial 1. Over the past three months, her gaze has been constantly drawn to it as she reads yet another intelligence briefing paper or cajoles her way through another conference call. As the ship traverses the planet's day side, the world below presents a face which is tantalizingly familiar: white clouds, blue seas, brown continents. When she looks closer, however, the detail always disappoints—coastlines bend and bulge in the wrong places, and the oceans are too large. It's like greeting someone you think is an old friend, then seeing the face of a stranger when they turn around.

Laura has come to prefer the planet's night side. When darkness shrouds the alien geography, she can almost convince herself that a particularly bright cluster of twinkling lights is Caprica City. But the pretence is an indulgence, and one she does not permit herself for very long. In the past 12 years, Laura has learned first hand the dangers of entertaining false hopes.

So many false hopes, down the years. Surely the universe owes them one that is real.

There is a soft cough from the stateroom's doorway. "Madam President."

She puts on her glasses, the better to focus on her immediate surroundings, and not the planet outside the stateroom's portholes. "Yes, Billy?"

"Galactica reports that Commander Adama's shuttle has just left. It'll dock in about eight minutes."

"Thank you."

Billy hovers. He hates giving her bad news. Years of practice apparently haven't made it any easier for him.

"What is it, Billy?"

He looks apologetic as he says, "Galactica also advises that you turn on CNN."

Picking up multimedia transmissions from the Thirteenth Colony isn't difficult for the ships of the Fleet—in fact, it was the distant echoes of decades-old transmissions caught on Galactica's long range scans which first alerted them to the planet's existence outside myth. As they drew closer, the signals became clearer, the voices louder, until now, in orbit, the flood of electronic noise often swamps the limited power of the Fleet's ship-to-ship comms. To anyone with a powerful deep-space scanner, the Thirteenth Colony is a beacon, broadcasting the presence of life in this corner of the galaxy across the silence.

Laura nods, and Billy goes to the viewer set into the stateroom's wall which once showed in-flight movies to bored passengers. He turns it on, then performs a complicated series of adjustments designed to persuade it to work. When simply keeping every ship in the Fleet supplied with air and water is a full time job, there is no maintenance crew time left to spare for non-essential equipment. Not even for the President.

_"...going over to our reporter Jeannie Edwards, who's talking to us live from outside the Pentagon. Jeannie, what can you tell us?"_

_"Mike, the White House refused to comment this afternoon; however it seems increasingly apparent that the leaked information comes from a very senior source in the Pentagon. The human beings in the orbiting ships are not, as the public has been led to believe, survivors of a natural disaster, but are in fact refugees from an interstellar war in which a number of inhabited planets were annihilated."_

_"A literal war of the worlds, Jeannie?"_

_"That's right, Mike. The confidential memo does not specify who the aggressor was in this war, but in several places the wording appears to suggest that the enemy was not human. What is even more worrying, the memo describes how the refugee convoy has had a number of further encounters with the aggressors since fleeing their home world."_

_"So these aliens are chasing them, Jeannie."_

_"Maybe even chasing them all the way to Earth, Mike."_

"Turn it off."

Laura sits back in her chair, takes off her glasses and presses her fingertips into her eye sockets. Bright patterns of blue and green not unlike those on the surface of the planet outside swirl behind her eyelids. She allows herself a moment simply to wallow in the anger and frustration before her political instincts take over. The situation has changed; very well, so must her strategy.

She thanks Billy and motions to him to take a seat at the second, smaller desk in the stateroom. As he reaches for notepad and pen, Laura takes a minute to focus her thoughts, then presses the labeled button on the speakerphone that gives her a direct line to Galactica's CIC.

"Madam President."

"Good afternoon, Colonel Gaeta. I'd like you to patch me through to the planetside connection, please."

"Yes, sir."

There is a silence, a series of clicks, and then: "This is the private office of the Secretary General of the United Nations of Earth," says a female voice smoothly. At least, the first part is smooth, and there is only the smallest of hesitations before the last two words to indicate they are a recent addition. "Greetings, President Roslin. How may I assist you?"

"I'd like to speak to Secretary Tchenguiz."

"Certainly, Madam President."

Another pause, and then the connection clicks again.

"President Roslin. I was about to contact you." By now, Laura has spent so many hours talking to the Thirteenth Colony's appointed representative that the timbres and tones of his voice are as familiar to her as a lover's. Today, there is a slight roughness around the edges of his words. He sounds as if he's just spent most of the day shouting; somewhat uncharitably, Laura hopes he has. "I assume you would like to discuss what is currently being reported on our news networks."

"I would like to discuss it very much," Laura says. "Regretfully, Secretary Tchenguiz, I am reluctant to say anything until I can be certain it will remain private."

"I can assure you that every effort is being made to trace the source of the leak—"

She's claimed the moral high ground and put him on the defensive. Good. Now that her negotiating position has been significantly weakened, she needs every advantage she can get. Smoothly, she interrupts him, "Unfortunately, I think we both know exactly what the source of the information was. The matters described in that memo have only ever arisen in our confidential discussions. At least, you assured me they were confidential."

"Madam President, you have my absolute and categorical assurance that the leaked information did not come from either myself or my staff."

He sounds genuinely affronted, and the truth is that she's inclined to believe him. But it hardly makes a difference—in the short time Laura has had to acquaint herself with the government and culture of this world, it has already become abundantly clear that its politics are as complex and murky as anything the Twelve Colonies ever produced.

"If you'll pardon the observation, it appears that those nations of yours aren't as united as you'd like them to be."

There is a short silence on the other end of the line, and Laura knows that he too is reviewing his negotiation strategy.

"I will be frank with you," the Secretary General says. "You have described to me a civilization of twelve entire worlds—more than seventy billion people—united under a single government. I, on the other hand, must fairly represent the interests of 191 separate nations—not to mention the 78 others which are not members of the United Nations, but which are nevertheless demanding a voice in these talks." His voice has quickened, a rare betrayal of the feelings of the man behind the diplomat. "Of course there is disunity, Madam President. It would be a miracle if there were not."

"Miracles occasionally happen," Laura says. The planet outside the window—serene, silent—once again draws her gaze. "We survived long enough to get here."

"I appreciate that," the Secretary General says. Then, his voice a shade softer, he adds, "Truly, I do. But you must understand: this was bound to become public knowledge eventually, and this reaction was inevitable. People are afraid. They see your technology, far in advance of ours, your ships which have traveled halfway across the galaxy, and they wonder what kind of enemy could defeat you so completely. And they wonder if that enemy is even now bearing down upon us, too."

"I wish I could tell you that is not the case. I wish it very much. The truth is, I have no assurances to offer, and based on our past experiences, the balance of probability suggests the day is coming." _The balance of probability._ It is such an innocuous phrase to describe twelve years of running and hiding, of skirmishes and ambushes and the exhaustion of constant, grinding fear.

Her next words matter a great deal, and Laura chooses them with care. "But when that day comes, I believe that with your resources and our technology, we will be ready to face the enemies of humanity together."

"Many among us are saying that, if you had not come here, we would not have those enemies."

As happens sometimes—less often now than in those first years—Laura feels two responses warring within her, that of the human being and the president. They are so disparate that she feels she can hardly hold them both in her head at once without it cracking open. _I'm sorry, _she wants to say. _You're right, we shouldn't have come. We shouldn't have brought the mistakes of our history to your door. We were scared. We were desperate for any hope, however faint, however remote. _

_I was desperate._

As always, she stifles the human being and lets the president answer. "We picked up echoes of your electronic signals from thirty light years away. The Cylons are equally capable of detecting them. More capable, in fact. They would have found you themselves, eventually."

"Perhaps," the Secretary General says. "The point, Madam President, is that now we'll never know."

The first lesson of negotiation is to recognize when a point is inarguable, and so she does not attempt to counter that. It's time to cede some ground, and show that she is willing to compromise.

"Given these developments, Secretary General, if you feel it would be best to postpone my visit—"

"No. That will not be necessary. Postponement would send out the wrong messages. We would appear to bow too easily to external pressures." Then, his tone deliberately lighter, he adds, "Besides, when the opportunity to make history arises, it is bad form to put it off to another day."

Laura smiles—he can't see her, but it will change her tone, lend a subtle warmth to her words. "I agree completely, Secretary General."

"Then we will proceed as planned. And the next time you and I speak, it will be face to face."

"I look forward to it."

Laura puts down the handset and, when it clicks securely into place, exhales slowly. Billy is shuffling together the pages of notes he has taken of the conversation. "Maybe we can make this work for us," he says. "Now that the Cylon threat is public, what we have to trade—our weapons, space folding technology—will be recognized as being of even greater value."

"And once we've bargained away the only strategic advantage we have, what then?"

Commander Adama is at the entrance to the stateroom, looking stiff in a dress uniform which—like everything else in the Fleet—has seen better days. Tiredly, Laura says, "Your objections have already been noted, Commander. On many occasions."

"Then note them again." There was a short period, after her victory in the first election but before Lee Adama's death, when Laura felt that her working relationship with the Fleet's military leader was one of mutual respect and even support. But that was a long time ago, and these days the best she can say about the Commander is that he is, at least, a familiar adversary.

Of course, it's no more than she could say about the Cylons.

"Giving these people anything will be like throwing matches into a powder keg," Adama is saying now. "Within a year they'll have destroyed each other and taken us with them."

"As I recall," she says coolly, "looking for the Thirteenth Colony was your idea. And here we are."

"Here we are," he agrees, his expression unreadable. Then, just as the silence which follows is becoming pointed: "Your shuttle is ready, Madam President."

"Good," Laura says, rising. "Let's go and make history."

  
***

  
Laura is not surprised when she boards the shuttle to find Kara Thrace in the pilot's seat; she would not have expected Adama to trust this task to anybody else. Since the death of his son he has come to rely on Starbuck more and more, to the point where the relationship has begun to draw comments and whispers. No one gossips to Laura, of course—that's the problem with being a symbol as well as a person—but like every astute politician she has her sources. It helps that Billy is married to one of the Galactica's bridge crew.

She is more surprised when the Commander himself takes the co-pilot's position. Her expression obviously betrays more of her reaction than she intends, because he says, pointedly, "I can still remember how to fly, Madam President."

Laura catches herself and gives him a conciliatory smile. "Forgive me; I don't doubt it."

"I do," Starbuck says. She points at one of the shuttle's controls. "That button vents the atmosphere. Just a friendly reminder, sir: don't push it."

"You're the one pushing it, Captain," Adama growls. His face is stony, but his voice is warm, and in a moment of perfect clarity, Laura suddenly understands both that the whisperers are right and that it doesn't matter. Starbuck is probably the only person in the entire Fleet who can talk to Adama like that and get away with it, and after 12 long years of enduring the isolation of his rank, such simple intimacies must be as welcome to him as fresh air to lungs weary of an atmosphere recycled thousands of times.

Laura can hardly remember what it feels like to breathe fresh air.

Thin wisps of vapor appear on the other side of the shuttle's cockpit windows, and a faint whining sound begins and steadily rises in volume. "Entering the atmosphere now," Starbuck says, checking the instruments.

They descend through layers of cloud, then follow the arranged flight path over a dizzying expanse of open ocean. Starbuck glances over her shoulder at Laura. "Make sure you tell 'em we want someplace with a coast. We gotta get us some beachfront property."

Laura smiles. "I'll see what I can do."

A few minutes later, they reach land, and begin the final descent. Vast tracts of the planet roll beneath the shuttle, wild and apparently almost completely uninhabited. _Surely_, she thinks, _surely there is space for us here_. On Caprica, fifty thousand people was barely the size of one average town.

Amazing, how just remembering how few they are can still pierce her this sharply. The sense of loss is almost a physical ache.

Starbuck is looking at her oddly. "Are you all right, sir?"

"I'm fine," she says. "I'd just forgotten how big a planet is, up close."

"I'd advise taking a moment to adjust when you first get out of the shuttle," Adama tells her. "People who spend years on spacecraft are more likely to experience attacks of agoraphobia when they go planetside."

Laura nods. "Thank you, Commander."

"Landing in ten," Starbuck reports from the seat next to him. "Please finish your complementary drinks and return your seat-trays to the upright position."

There is the smallest of thuds as the shuttle touches down. Laura lifts her arm and drops it experimentally. Is it her imagination, or does the planet's gravity feel somehow different from the normal, artificially generated fields on the Fleet's ships?

And then she wonders when exactly she started thinking of spaceships as her normal environment.

Laura releases herself from the seat's webbing and makes her way to the airlock, flanked by her honor guard of Colonial marines. Starbuck will remain with the ship, but Adama will accompany her as she meets the leaders of the Thirteenth Colony. He insisted on that.

The Commander will not, however, be participating in the negotiations which follow. Laura insisted on _that._

In the cramped airlock, she shuffles and finds herself standing right beside the Commander, their arms pressing against each other. He inclines his head towards her and she sighs inwardly and waits for whatever final objection he has it in mind to make.

Instead he says, so quietly that only she can hear, "I promised I'd do whatever it took to get you here. You're here. Promise me you'll make sure the journey was worth it."

She stares at him, but before she can frame an answer, the airlock doors begin to slide open sending a bright slash of light into her eyes and a blast of cold, fresh air into her face.

Laura steps out of the airlock, and on to the surface of the Thirteenth Colony.

Almost straight away, she feels dizzy, overcome by the sheer expanse of open ground. She takes a breath—her favourite trick for composing herself—but even this is a mistake, as her lungs are flooded with an overwhelming tide of new and alien scents. Directly in front of her there is a carefully arranged row of leaders and heads of state, but Laura isn't looking at them. Instead she finds herself staring, fascinated, at the crowds held back behind the barriers some distance away. There must be tens of thousands of them—easily more human beings gathered together right here than there are in the entire Fleet. And they are all cheering and waving banners and placards.

Then she realizes: the crowd isn't cheering. And the banners do not bear messages of welcome.

The understanding of the extent of the mistake—of her mistake, her miscalculation—hits her with the force of a blow, and she feels her legs buckle underneath her. The dizziness and disorientation grow until the marching music and the crowd's jeers and shouts of hatred merge into an ugly cacophony.

"Frak," someone says. It might be Adama, which is strange, because she doesn't think she's ever heard him swear in her presence before. He'll make a bad impression on their hosts, she thinks, disjointedly. Mustn't do that.

"Frak, she's hit. Stop the bleeding, stop the bleeding—"

Her chest hurts. Maybe the cancer is back? Just like the first time: one day you're healthy, the next you're dying. The sickness was there for months, years maybe, and you never knew. Or, more likely, you knew, deep down, but chose to ignore the signs until it was too late. Or is she getting cancer and Cylons mixed up? They both begin with 'C'.

"President Roslin. Madam President. Laura, can you hear me? Laura. Laura!"

It's been years since anyone's called her Laura.

_Laura_, she thinks, but the word is already losing its significance and its cohesion, breaking apart into a string of mismatched, random sounds.

The voices are falling silent, one by one. It'll be quiet soon.

She lies back and looks up at Earth's blue, blue sky.

  
**2\. Wife**

  
On the day the world ends, Laura Roslin finds out that her remission is over, and the cancer has returned.

Two years before the end of the world, she marries William Adama in a small, civil ceremony.

Five years before the end of world, she meets him for the second time.

Eight years before the end of the world, Laura is diagnosed with cancer, attends the decommissioning of the Galactica and is introduced to William Adama.

The decommissioning gets a lot of media coverage, but only because nothing important happens that day.

  
***

Traditionally, the outgoing President of the Federation of the Twelve Colonies throws a ball on the last night of his or her term of office at which the next President is the guest of honor. The purpose, in theory, is to smooth the transition between administrations after an election, allowing the loser to demonstrate his graciousness in defeat and the winner his magnanimity.

In practice, the gatherings drip with as much venom as a pit of snakes. The old guard snipe bitterly at the newcomers and the victors lose no time in beginning to fight among themselves for positions of influence in the new regime.

Who's up, who's down, who's in, who's out. The faces change but the game doesn't, and Laura is sick of it all.

Which is ironic, she thinks, staring down at her glass of warm champagne, considering that today is the first time in three years, almost to the day, that she has been officially well. When she thought about today—when she let herself think about it—she imagined a rush of joy and relief, a sense of elation for her freedom and future regained. Instead, she feels curiously empty, as if the surgeons cut something vital out of her along with the tumor.

For the past three years, she has made survival the sole focus and goal of her existence; almost everything else she used to care about has been sacrificed on its alter. Her career stalled long before President Adar's election defeat, and her closest relationships quietly withered under the strain of constant ill-health and the uncomfortable shadow of mortality. Like most politicians, she has always had more acquaintances than friends, and acquaintances do not as a rule want to hold your hand as you vomit bile or listen to you talk at 2 a.m. when you can't sleep because you're afraid of not waking up in the morning.

Somehow, she kept waking up. Surgery, chemotherapy, so many injections she started to feel like a human pincushion, the pain and the nausea and the loss of hair and weight and what felt like the last vitality of her youth must have been worth it, because she has survived.

She survived. Fine. Great. What now?

She swirls the liquid in her glass, displacing a wave of sluggish bubbles. What now?

At the far end of the banqueting hall, she sees President Adar, working his way diligently through a dense crowd of supporters offering commiserations and sympathies. He's smiling, but Laura can read the weariness in the slight stoop of his shoulders. She wonders if he'd be glad to see her—they haven't spoken face to face since she resigned as Secretary of Education two years ago—or if she would simply disappear in the swarm of well-wishers. She decides to try anyway: this is probably the last opportunity she'll have to talk to him.

She starts to make her way through the throng of guests, edging through the spaces between knots of people. Before she's half way there she wishes she hadn't bothered. The hall is too warm, the music too loud, and the voices of the partygoers buzz harshly in her ears. She passes a few familiar faces, but no one she particularly wants to talk to. Or who wants to talk to her.

Then, squeezing past a woman wearing an extravagant and wholly unbecoming gown, she walks straight into a slight, dark-haired man. One moment her drink is in its glass, the next it is swiftly sinking into the fabric of his suit. Her embarrassment only grows when she recognizes him.

"I won't hear of it," he says when she offers to pay for his cleaning bill. "Really, the quality of the wine is so poor it's likely my jacket chose to make the ultimate sacrifice so you wouldn't have to drink it." He smiles, flashing his white, even teeth.

"That's very generous of you, Dr Baltar."

"Oh, you've heard of me! How flattering." Again, that smile. "The pursuit of knowledge is its own reward, of course, but it's always a delight to learn one's efforts are not completely anonymous."

Privately, Laura feels that anyone who appears on chat shows as regularly as Gaius Baltar has no basis to claim anonymity. "Actually, we've met," she says.

"I can't believe that. I'm sure meeting someone as lovely as yourself would have stuck in my memory."

Baltar may be a shallow egotist, but he's charming and an accomplished flatterer. Laura feels her spirits begin to lift marginally. "It was at the education and science symposium on Aries, three years ago. President Adar hosted a reception and we talked about—"

But Baltar isn't listening to Laura anymore. His gaze has wandered to a point somewhere behind her left shoulder. She looks round, and immediately sees what's caught his attention. A woman is approaching them through the crowd. She's young and blonde and is wearing a red dress with one slit that goes all the way down to her navel and another that goes all the way up to her hip. The woman brushes past Laura as if she weren't there.

"Gaius Baltar," the woman says. Her voice is low and husky. "I've been waiting for a chance to talk to you all night."

"You have?" Baltar says, apparently shocked into something like an honest reaction. He quickly regains both his composure and his facade. "Well, I'm all yours," he purrs.

He is, Laura sees. His eyes are fixed on the woman in the red dress, even his body language has changed, casting Laura out of his personal space. It's as if she's suddenly invisible. Next to the woman in the red dress, Laura supposes she is.

She makes an unacknowledged excuse and leaves Baltar and his new friend to get to know each other. In the ladies' washrooms, she grips the edge of the sink with her hands and fights the urge to cry like a teenager snubbed at a school dance. Instead, she takes out her compact and lipstick and dabs make-up on her sallow complexion, appraising herself critically in the mirror as she blends and pats. The washroom lighting is bright and unrelenting, highlighting every wrinkle and shadow. She may be well, but she doesn't look it. In the past three years, she's aged ten.

For the first time in her life, she feels truly old. Old and worn out and used up. Is this the life she fought so hard to keep?

Frak this. Time to leave.

She puts her makeup back into her purse and snaps it shut. Then she leaves the washrooms and walks down the high-ceilinged marble hallways of the President's official residence, increasing her pace until she can no longer hear the sounds of the party going on in the banqueting hall. On the way, she uses her phone to order a cab to take her back to the hotel where she's staying tonight. She's so eager to get away that when she walks out of the President's official residence and sees the car waiting at the front of the building, she gets into it without hesitating and says, "Downtown, please. The Five Rivers Hotel."

The words are barely out of her mouth when she realizes there's someone in the back of the cab with her.

"This cab's taken," the driver says. "Sorry, lady."

She's in the wrong taxi. Laura feels herself starting to color; tonight is fast becoming memorable, for all the wrong reasons. She mumbles an apology as she reaches for the car's door to get out again.

"Wait," says her fellow passenger. He taps the back of the driver's seat to get his attention. "The Five Rivers is near Harmony Boulevard, right?" His voice is familiar but the back seat of the taxi is shadowy and Laura can't see his face well enough to tell if she knows him.

The driver shrugs. "It's over the bridge."

"That's fine. Go there first."

Laura shakes her head. "I don't want to inconvenience you."

"You're not."

The man leans forward a little as the cab pulls out, and bands of light from the streetlamps passing by outside illuminate his face. Over the course of her political career, Laura became adept at remembering a host of names; she can still place people she talked to once or twice a decade ago. "Commander Adama, isn't it?"

He studies her with that vague and slightly suspicious look people get when they can't remember who the person they're talking to is or why they're supposed to know them. "Forgive me, you are...?"

"Laura Roslin," she prompts him.

"Ah," Adama says. She has no idea whether that means he remembers her or not.

They sit together in silence as the taxi weaves its way through the late evening traffic. The lights of Caprica City's offices and shopping malls glide past with a lulling kind of regularity, and after a while Laura begins to relax again. "Thanks for letting me hitch a ride."

"A taxi ride through midtown isn't much. Time was, I could have taken you anywhere in the System in a Battlestar." Adama casts her a sideways glance. "Until someone had her decommissioned."

Well, at least now she knows he remembers her. Laura bridles. "That wasn't my personal decision, Commander. As you know."

"No, you just turned up and read the speech."

The taxi slows as it approaches red lights at a junction. Laura silently wills them to change. A hostile encounter with a bitter old soldier is the last thing she needs tonight.

"Have you visited the Galactica Museum?" she asks.

"No."

"I have. I was there on the day it opened. I had the privilege of accompanying a group of schoolchildren on the first tour."

"Schoolchildren," Adama repeats. His tone falls somewhere between scathing and horrified. Laura ignores him.

"The oldest of them was twelve. All any of them knew about the Cylon war was out of history books; most of their parents were small children themselves when it ended. But that day, I watched it become real to them. The Galactica made it real."

"We only put things into museums when they're over and done with, Ms Roslin. In the past, finished, gone. We say it's to help us remember. Usually it's to help us forget." He looks at her. "I flew combat in the last year of the war. I was eighteen. I fought at Devada and I saw exactly what the Cylons were capable of. I'd prefer not to see that reduced to a multimedia presentation and a display in a glass box."

"My brother was killed at Devada," Laura says.

Adama hesitates. "I'm sorry," he says at last. "A lot of good men were."

"I was very young when he died. Growing up, all I had was vague memories and a few keepsakes." Pointedly, she adds, "I spent a lot of time looking for ways to make him real."

Softly, Adama says, "'I sang into the darkness, and wept at the faint echoes.'"

Laura stares at him. "That's Lascaro, isn't it? _The Song of Silence._" She smiles. "I didn't think soldiers and literature mixed."

To her surprise, he smiles back. "You'd be amazed how much soldiering involves sitting around with time on your hands and only limited ways to fill it."

The taxi leaves midtown and starts to cross the Bay Bridge. The halo of light from the buildings on either side of the river dims, so that the night sky becomes clearer. Caprica's closest neighbor, Virgon, is the brightest point of light other than the moon; it glitters with a steel-blue light. It's a beautiful night, and Laura is suddenly glad to be alive. Glad she is still alive.

"Do you have another engagement this evening, Commander?"

"I have a pressing appointment with a glass of ambrosia and my bed."

Laura laughs quietly. "It's good to know I wasn't the only one having a less than enjoyable time."

"I had little enough patience for politicians back when the decisions they made mattered to me; I've got even less now. At least these days I have the option of leaving early if I want. No offence intended."

"None taken. To tell you the truth, I hardly count as a politician myself, anymore. I won't be joining President—" She corrects herself, "Representative Adar when he forms the Opposition."

"You're retiring?"

"I've been unwell for several years," she says. "I've lost my taste for the fight."

"A point comes," Adama says, "when the best strategy is withdrawal."

"Spoken like a true old soldier."

The taxi comes to a stop, and Laura realizes with surprise that they've arrived at the Five Rivers. Odd: first she wanted the journey to end as fast as possible, and now she's sorry it's over.

She stops, half out of the taxi, half in it, and looks back at Adama. The question she asked herself earlier in the evening returns. What now?

"Would you..." She hesitates, then plunges on, "Would you like to share that nightcap you were talking about, Commander?"

"Thank you," he says. "I think I will."

  
***

It's a small wedding, but it's what both of them want. Laura chooses a simple dress in ivory silk, elegantly tailored and becoming on an older woman. Instead of an elaborate bouquet, she carries a small posy of blue morning-flowers, the traditional Caprican symbol of marriage.

The guest list is similarly pared down to essentials. Laura had hoped that Jonathan Adar would be able to come, but the accelerating pace of the election campaign has meant that his participation will be limited to a message of good wishes. Many of Bill's guests have had to offer their apologies as well, especially since most of them are Fleet officers on active duty in the farthest flung reaches of the System.

The ones who have made it aren't at all what Laura expected Bill's old friends and colleagues to be like. There's a retired Colonel called Tigh who arrives already visibly the worse for wear and proceeds to spend the rest of the day drinking with an absolute singularity of purpose, before getting into a loud argument with a young woman called Kara Thrace who used to serve under Bill on the Galactica. And then, of course, there's Bill's son, Lee. He sits next to Lieutenant Thrace and stares straight ahead while the vows are made, as if attending his father's marriage is a distasteful but necessary duty.

After the ceremony, the celebrations shift to the house Laura and Bill have just bought together on the shore of Lake Ephise, where the caterers have set up a buffet on the terrace overlooking the water. Laura's time in politics has left her well equipped to play hostess at any kind of social gathering, and she falls naturally into the role now, mixing with the guests and making sure she speaks to as many of them as possible.

"Look after the old man," Lieutenant Thrace says. She talks about Bill with a mixture of admiration and affection that touches Laura. "He's spent long enough looking after everyone else."

"I promise to try."

"Good enough." Then, unexpectedly, the younger woman throws her arms around Laura and hugs her warmly. "Welcome to the family."

Leaving Kara attacking the desserts with enthusiasm, Laura looks around for Bill and realizes he's nowhere to be seen. She finds both him and Lee at the most distant end of the terrace, out of sight of the party. They're talking—or, judging by their faces and body language, arguing.

Deliberately ignoring the frosty atmosphere, she walks up to them and places one hand lightly on Bill's arm. "I wondered where you'd gotten to. They're just starting to serve dessert. If I were you, I'd come quickly before Kara demolishes everything in sight."

"Thank you, Laura, but I won't be staying much longer," Lee says. He speaks to her the same way he always has, with the kind of formality she supposes he uses with his superior officers.

"For just one day, Lee," Bill says, his words clipped and tight. He's struggling not to say more. "Would it be too much to ask—"

"Yes," Lee snaps. "Yes, as a matter of fact it would."

"Damn it, Lee—"

Laura squeezes Bill's arm a little harder. The conflict between the Adama men isn't news to her, and she can't see it being resolved any time soon. In the meantime, she's prepared to maintain a studied neutrality. "I'm pleased you could come today, Lee. I hope you'll consider coming back to visit some time. Your father talks a lot about you; I'd hoped we could get to know each other better."

Lee looks at her, then returns his gaze to his father. Laura wonders if they realize how much they look alike, with those twin flinty expressions in their eyes.

"I'm sorry, Laura," Lee says at last, "but this has nothing to do with you." Then he turns and walks down the terrace steps and away from the house.

"I'd hoped," Bill says when his son is out of earshot, "he could at least be civil."

She rubs his sleeve. "It's okay. I'm still glad he came."

From the front of the house, they can hear the crunch of tires on gravel.

"I'm not sure I am," Bill says.

  
***

  
Laura is woken by a bright light shining into her eyes. She rolls over in bed and sees that the curtains of the lake house's master bedroom are half-open, allowing a shaft of sunlight to fall on to the pillows. Bill's side of the bed is empty, meaning he is already up, although his share of the blankets have been replaced so neatly that a stranger entering the room would hardly be able to tell that Laura didn't sleep alone last night. She smiles to herself; even after two years of marriage, his military habits still amuse her.

She stops smiling when she remembers what she has to do today.

Today, she tells herself sternly. No more putting it off. She's procrastinated too long already, and she's certain Bill has guessed something is the matter. He hasn't pressed her, but this trip to the lake was his suggestion, and she thinks he is wearing up to asking her directly.

He's a good man. He deserves the truth.

She gets up and pulls on her bathrobe. When she calls Bill's name there's no answer, which means he has either gone for a walk or is having breakfast on the terrace. Whichever, he's not in the house, so she has the privacy she needs.

Laura searches her overnight bag until she finds a box marked with the brand name of a popular indigestion remedy in amongst her toiletries. The pills inside it are bright red capsules, clearly not meant for upset stomachs, but she chose the disguise because Bill's iron constitution means indigestion medicine is the last thing he would start digging around in her bag for.

In the bathroom, she fills a glass of water and swallows down the highest dose of painkillers she dares take.

It's strange, she thinks, how easily she fell into the trap of treating good health as a right rather than a privilege. Even after five years of schooling herself to talk about remission instead of cure, of qualifying every future plan with an "if", she didn't really believe the disease would return. She had something to live for, therefore she would live. So simple. So wrong.

She stands still and takes deep breaths until the drugs kick in.

She gets into the shower, and turns it on only to gasp and get out of the way of the stream of cold water as fast as possible. Tugging the bathroom light cord confirms it—the power is out. The lake house is sufficiently remote that power outages are an infrequent irritation. The view more than makes up for it.

By the time she's had breakfast, the power will probably have been restored. Laura puts her robe back on and heads for the kitchen. Through the glass doors, she can see Bill sitting outside on the terrace overlooking the lake, his back to her. She pours herself a glass of fruit juice and goes to join him.

"Good morning," she says. "Power's out again. You know, I was thinking today we might—"

She drops the glass of fruit juice. The tumbler shatters on the tiles, and juice splashes on to the hem of her robe and Bill's feet.

"Oh," she says.

Behind the mountains on the other shore of the lake, a huge cloud is rising, slowly blotting out the blue morning sky as it expands into a grey-black mushroom shape. There's another further in the distance. Another one beyond that.

She's felt like this before, on the day her cancer was first diagnosed. It's as if the ground, so solid beneath her feet a moment ago, has suddenly dissolved, leaving her tumbling helplessly in the void.

"Shouldn't we... shouldn't we get in the house?" As soon as she's said it, she realizes how absurd it sounds: _A nuclear holocaust appears to have started, dear. Do you think we should go inside? _Maybe there's nothing she could say right now which wouldn't be absurd. "Or back to the city. The car—"

"There'd be no point," Bill says. He doesn't look like he's about to move anywhere, so Laura sits down with him at the breakfast table.

"What...?" She can't frame a more coherent question.

"The Cylons," Bill says. "It can't be anything else. The full planetary defense net should have mobilized by now, but I haven't seen any kind of response, so we can assume they've disabled it somehow."

She stares at him. "The world's ending... and you were going to let me sleep?"

Quietly, Bill says, "It seemed like the kindest thing to do."

Laura remembers the pills hidden in her bag in the bedroom, and feels a sudden, bizarre sense of relief that at least this means she won't have to tell him her remission has ended.

Funny: that's all the last half-century of human history has been—a period of remission. Like the cancer, the Cylons were never defeated. They were just gathering their strength for the final assault.

She looks at the growing mushroom cloud. Already it fills half the sky. "How long?"

"Just a few minutes," Bill says. "I think we're close enough that the blast wave will make it more or less instantaneous."

"Lee..." she says.

Bill only shakes his head.

After that, there doesn't seem to be anything else left to say. When Bill, never a tactile man, takes her hand, Laura holds it tightly. They sit side by side in silence, watching the ripples pass over the surface of the lake. Very soon, the water starts to rise in waves.

  
**3\. Teacher**

  
All morning, the children are restless and fidgety; every time Laura turns her back to write on the board a chorus of high-pitched giggles and whispers breaks out behind her. She makes a valiant effort to make it to the end of her planned lesson (the water cycle: vapor to rain to river to ocean to vapor again) but when the class returns after morning break it's clear she's not going to be able to make them settle, not today.

"Very well," she says, folding her arms sternly, "close your books and face the front. Let's do something different. Who's the oldest one here?"

A boy near the back raises his hand. "I am, sir."

The children call all the other teachers at the school by their names, but Laura is always 'sir' to them; the incongruous term of respect sounds odd coming from young mouths, especially when none of her charges are old enough to remember her tenure as president. She suspects that it's a habit they've picked up from their parents, a reminder that she will never entirely lose the distinctive aura power creates. Even if these days she is just a teacher, again.

"Very good, Matthew. Where were you born?"

"In the Old Colonies. On Aries."

"And who's the youngest?"

There is a brief, heated debate between several of the girls before one of the Hopes puts up her arm. Of the 22 children in the class, there are four Hopes, three Dawns, two Faiths and one unlucky boy whose parents decided the best way to commemorate humanity's deliverance from the Cylons was to call their son Phoenix.

"Where were you born, Hope?"

"Here," the girl says. "On Haven."

"All of you were born in the same year," Laura says, "the year we came to Haven. That makes you all the same age as the New Colony. Who knows why we decided to settle here?"

"Because it's a good place to hide from the Cylons," Matthew offers.

"Do you know why?"

"Because of the nebula."

"Well done. Do you know what a nebula is?"

He doesn't, and neither do any of the other children, so Laura explains the concept of a cloud of dust and debris so thick it can hide an entire solar system. Then she explains why Haven is a fortunate world—the same cloud that hides it also absorbs most of the fierce heat of the star it circles, so that Haven is a temperate planet in an orbit which would, normally, turn it into an uninhabitable ball of molten metal. Halfway through her explanation, the diagram she's drawing on the whiteboard becomes suddenly familiar, and she realizes it's the same one Lee Adama sketched excitedly for her on a notepad in her stateroom on Colonial One, the day he returned from the scouting mission that located Haven.

"But as well as hiding us from the rest of the universe, it also hides the rest of the universe from us. When you look up at the sky at night, what do you see?"

The children look at her blankly for a long time, until Matthew finally answers, "Well, nothing." It's only good discipline that keeps him from saying the implied 'duh' out loud.

"Right," Laura says, chalking a number of round shapes on to the diagram on the board, outside the nebula's protective haze. "We can't see any other suns from inside the nebula, only our own. If we were outside it—in space, say, with the Fleet—we'd be able to see the suns of other systems."

"All of them?"

"Not all of them. But a lot. Tens of thousands."

A sea of small brows furrow, trying to stretch their minds around this concept. It's probably too much to ask of these children, born and raised on a world where the sun is hazy and the night sky uniformly black. She's sorry that none of them will ever learn the constellations as viewed on a clear Caprican night, or make wishes on shooting stars. Then again, that these children have the chance to grow up in natural gravity and breathing fresh air—in fact, that these children have the chance to grow up at all—makes the absence of stars an acceptable loss.

From outside the school building, a low rumbling noise begins, like the crash of distant thunder, although the day is clear. Styluses begin to rattle against desk-tops. The children fidget nervously, and start to whisper again. She can see them trying to judge her mood, to decide if Sir is enough of a stickler for routine to deny them a half day's holiday to watch the Changeover begin.

What they don't know is that Laura has to work to stop from grinning like a fool in front of them. What would they think if they knew she's the most excited one here?

"Okay, that's enough for today. Let's go and meet the ships."

***

  
Half-way to the landing site, Laura gives up any pretence of leading the children, and lets them run ahead while she walks some distance behind. Her leg is troubling her today—the injury she sustained in the spring hasn't healed as fully as it should have. There was a time when this disability would have bothered Laura more than it does now. The pain is an inconvenience, it's true, but you have to be alive to feel pain in the first place, and it's been a long time since Laura took that for granted.

The landing site is located beyond the low hills that shelter the New Colony on its western side, on the river's flat flood plain. For most of Haven's year, ships cannot land on the plain—it is icebound during the long winter, then briefly part of the river itself when melt-water rushes down from the mountains in the thaw. There are only a few short weeks in late summer when the mud dries into a hard, compacted expanse and the plain can be used for landing. This period is therefore a time of intense activity for the New Colony, when raw materials and supplies are sent up to the Fleet for processing, and fuel, tools and other goods are shipped down to enable Haven to continue to grow. It is also the only opportunity for a large-scale switch of personnel between the Fleet and the New Colony to take place; Vipers and Raptors can still make the journey during the rest of the year, but only infrequently. There is no fuel to spare to run a taxi service between the Fleet and the planet.

For these reasons, this annual event has become Haven's harvest festival—several weeks of intense work to maximize the number of round trips to the ships outside the nebula, culminating in a celebration to welcome home those who have been serving in the Fleet for the past year. It was the children who first called it the Changeover, but the name is an apt one, and the adults quickly adopted it, too.

It pleases Laura that it has taken so little time for Haven to begin to acquire its own traditions. Changeover; the end of one cycle, the start of a new one. A time to welcome home those who have been missed. It is exactly the kind of celebration a people slowly healing should have.

"You look thoughtful."

Lee Adama is at her side; he must have dropped out of the crowd heading up to the hills above the settlement and fallen silently into pace next to her without her noticing.

"I was just getting reflective," she says. "Old woman's prerogative."

A number of passers-by nod at Lee, and he returns each greeting with a smile and, more often than not, a name as well. On the night after he was elected, he came to Laura's door at two in the morning and told her, panicked, he had none of the skills he needed to lead the New Colony. Laura had brought him inside, made him a cup of hot red root tea and agreed with him.

"There's no manual to consult for this," she'd said. "No training, no preparation. There's nothing you can do except—do it. Do it, and care. Do you care?"

He'd looked at her, genuinely mystified, as if the question was so banal as to be not worth asking. "Of course."

And Laura had known he'd do fine.

"I tried to explain the stars to my class this morning," she remarks now to Lee as they walk, side by side. "I don't think I managed it very well."

Lee smiles. "Yes, I know the feeling. I was talking to Josie—you know, the Gaetas' oldest—last week. I was telling her about going to the movies, back on the Old Colonies. Half way through, just as I was describing how huge numbers of people used to get together to sit in the dark and watch giant moving images projected on to the wall... well, I had to stop. She was scrunching up her face and I just knew she thought I was making the whole thing up." He laughs. "Kara says we're breeding a generation of farmers down here. She wants to know where she's going to get her new pilots from in ten years' time."

"Does she plan to still be up there training them?" Laura asks. She keeps her tone light, but there's purpose in her question.

"Yes," Lee says after a moment. "I think she does."

They have reached the crest of the hill, at last. Laura is slightly breathless, even though the gradient could not be described as steep. Lee tactfully angles his arm so she can lean on him without obviously appearing to. The roaring noise from the upper atmosphere is much louder now; the ships are still hidden above the low-lying cloud, but there is no doubt they are on their way.

"We're holding a Council tomorrow," Lee says. Then, carefully, he goes on, "I'd like you to be there."

"I'm not sure that's appropriate," Laura says. She made a conscious decision when she stepped down not to appear to influence or interfere from the sidelines, and has taken pains to keep her resolution.

"My father is going to table a motion."

Laura looks at him. "Then I'm certain it's not appropriate. Lee—"

"Laura—"

They both break off at the same time, their appeals overlapping.

"Kara told me he wants to man the Galactica with a full crew and take her to look for other human colonies," Lee says, keeping his voice low so that the people standing near them can't overhear. He needn't worry—the ships are descending now, in a blast of fire and white noise, and everyone else is too busy enjoying the spectacle to want to eavesdrop. "We can't let him leave and take the ship. I can't let him do that. But I don't—"

The noise of the transport ships landing reaches a crescendo, and his voice is drowned out entirely, leaving Laura to wonder how Lee was going to finish that sentence. She thinks she can guess: Lee Adama may be Haven's elected leader of five years' standing, but William Adama is still the New Colony's military leader, the commander of the last Battlestar and, perhaps most importantly of all, his father.

He was going to say: _But I don't know if I can order him to give up the Galactica._

But what Lee cannot order, Laura knows, equally, she cannot ask.

The first of the ships settles on to the plain safely, and the crowd around them erupts into cheers of joyous welcome.

***

  
In the first months of Haven's existence, a house was built for William Adama near what would become the center of the New Colony, very close to the meeting hall. The Starkey family live in it now—Olwen Starkey runs the settlement's water purification plant, and his wife Siah is the administrator of the hospital. William Adama has not spent a single night in the house on Haven that was meant for him.

Instead, on his infrequent trips to the planet's surface, he stays either in the Fleet barracks or with Laura. Mostly with Laura. The arrangement has become so normal that no one even bothers to gossip about it anymore.

The settlement has only two kinds of houses, the four-room family residences and the two-room single dwellings. Apart from the number of rooms, there is almost nothing to choose between the two types—both are sturdy, single storey constructions made from blocks of prefabricated building material created on the Fleet's factory ships. The only thing Laura misses is the luxury of a private bathroom—Haven's plumbing is still rudimentary, and the washing facilities are communal—but she enjoys having a home of her own again. Colonial One was many things to her, but it was never a home. She never let it become one.

Tonight, a fire burns brightly in the hearth of the dwelling's main room, and Laura is curled comfortably on the bed, her chin resting on William's shoulder, his hand on her thigh. It's a cold night, and the blankets are drawn up tightly around them. It's so much easier for two people to keep warm than one, Laura thinks.

When his hand moves from the top of her thigh to the warm crevice between her legs, she knows exactly how to respond. Moving around, she finds his mouth with his and kisses him. He even tastes like his ship—he has the same astringent tang as the Galactica's recycled atmosphere, as if, after all these years, the ship has penetrated him to the core. So Laura kisses him harder, more deeply, trying to replace that artificial taste with her own. His hand moves between her legs, pressing her, now gently, now harder, and she lets out a low sound to show her pleasure, which reverberates in her throat and makes her tongue shiver against his.

It's only when he shifts his position to be on top of her, forcing her to bend her leg, that their shared rhythm is momentarily broken.

"Ow," she says, wincing as the old injury protests. "My leg—"

Immediately, he changes his position. "What is it?"

Laura frowns, annoyed at her ageing body for ruining the moment. "It's nothing. I fell a few months ago and broke it. It's still healing."

"Still?"

"Still. I'm not young anymore." She smiles, and runs her fingers lightly through the graying hair at his temples and on his chest. "Neither are you."

Taking his cue from her, William relaxes too. He dips his mouth to kiss her in the hollow at the base of her neck. "I was never young. That's just a scurrilous rumor started by Tigh."

The sharp pain in her leg is receding, although a dull ache remains. Laura hooks her arms around William's back and draws him down, closer to her, letting him know he can start again. "My leg's fine. It's not stopping me doing anything. We just have to take things slowly."

"Slowly," William says, "is not necessarily a bad thing."

He goes on to prove it, entering her deliberately, then moving in and out with an unhurried ease, allowing her pleasure to mount with his. When it comes, her orgasm is less an explosion and more a slow fire that glows hotly at her core, warming every inch her, from the soles of her feet to the palms of her hands.

Afterwards, Laura dozes for a while, but William is restless, and his constant tossing and turning keeps her from falling into a deeper sleep. She's too used to sleeping alone to ignore these disruptions. She rouses herself reluctantly from the bed's warmth and tangle of blankets to boil water. By the time the kettle whistles, William is no longer even pretending to sleep; instead, he's sitting up in the bed, leafing through one of the few books on Laura's shelves.

When she offers him a steaming cup, he sniffs it doubtfully. "Smells like burnt wood."

She doesn't say that's because that's what it is, more or less. "Red root tea. It's not coffee, but it's got a kick to it. Not bad, once you acquire the taste."

"Thanks, I won't."

She makes a cup for herself, and takes a seat by the dwelling's window. It's a clear night, and because her home is on the higher ground near the edge of the settlement, she has a panoramic view of all of the New Colony—the small dwellings, lights burning in their windows, the larger, dark shapes of the hospital and the town hall, the barns and the fields beyond. She feels, as she always does, a sense of fierce pride in everything that has been achieved here, mixed with terror that it might be taken away again—and also a kind of peace. Because, whether the Cylons find them or not, Laura is certain she will die on Haven. It is enough.

William is eyeing the empty shelf on the wall next to the bed. "I thought you had more books than that."

"I did." They were all, of course, gifts from William. Laura brought exactly one book with her to read on the way to the Galactica's decommissioning ceremony: it had been a dull tome on political theory, and Laura has spent many pointless hours wishing that, of all of humanity's rich literary history, she had saved just about anything else. "I donated most of them to the school library."

"I should bring some more down from the ship."

"I would have thought you'd want to keep them for the journey. When you go to look for other colonies."

He looks at her levelly. "You've been talking to my son."

"He's been talking to me. Actually, I've been trying to keep out of it. Except, where you and Lee are concerned, I never seem to succeed."

William closes the book; its covers meet with a dull clap. "It's a delusion," he says. "All of this. We're playing at being farmers and pioneers. We're no safer here than when we were all in space. In fact, the risk is even greater now. If the Cylons had ever caught up with the Fleet, there was a good chance that at least a couple of ships might be able to make a successful jump and get away. If they find us here, they'll wipe out the New Colony and every single last one of us. And then it really will be over."

"And what was the alternative? To keep running forever? That was destroying us just as effectively as the Cylons could have."

Even as she says it, Laura can feel herself growing weary. This is an old argument—she and William have been having it since the day Lee returned from the scouting mission into the nebula and announced the discovery of the planet hidden within it.

"If they do find us," William presses, "we can't outgun them. You and I both know that. The Galactica might just—with luck—take out one Base Ship, but they won't send one. They'll send hundreds. It could take us a century or more to build the kind of industrial base here we'd need to defend ourselves. Until then, we have to do something more than wait and hope and pray."

"I thought," Laura says softly, "we'd learned by now that's all we can do."

And it is, she thinks sadly, that simple. He was the one who wanted to keep moving; she was the one who wanted to stop, to choose a place to start over. But she and William are different, and Laura never wholly grasped how much until now. He belongs in space, in a way that Laura never could or want to. Wherever her home is, it must have open spaces and winds and seasons, or it is not her home. She belongs down here, he belongs up there, and any quiet dreams she harbored—dreams of a warm, shared bed in a dwelling under the blanket of Haven's dark, safe sky—she now realizes will always be just dreams, and nothing more.

She is too old for dreams, anyway.

"Fine," William snaps, anger in his voice. "Stay here and indulge this happy fantasy. But don't expect me to put on blinkers and smile until the Cylons find us. And they will find us."

When she finally gets back into it, the bed is a lot colder than it was.

***

Laura wonders, sometimes, what her old political colleagues would say if they could see what's become of the Colonial government these days. Where lawmaking was once conducted in the grand marble surroundings of the Caprica City Legislature, it is now carried out in a simple timber-framed building where humanity's leaders meet around a table that in a previous existence saw useful service in the Galactica's mess hall. The Colonial flag hangs on the wall behind the President's seat at the center of the table; otherwise the chamber is undecorated and austere.

The Council is in open session, although when Laura enters the main debating hall and takes a seat on one of the wooden benches in the public area she finds she is one of only a very few to show an interest in today's deliberations. Of course, it's the middle of the Changeover, and the busiest week in the New Colony's year—even so, she would have expected word of William's proposal to take the Galactica away to have spread quickly around the community and attracted a large and vocal crowd to this debate. When she lifts a printed Order of Business and checks it, she understands why; William's motion is there, but it is described only as "a reassessment of resource allocation between the New Colony and the Fleet", and placed after what promises to be a long and dry discussion of next year's crop rotation.

Lee may not have had the skills of a politician when he was first elected, but he's learned a lot.

The door at the far end of the hall opens and the observers in the public area stand up as the Council enters. Laura is last on her feet—it's cold today, and her leg hurts more than usual. But she's standing by the time the Council files in, led by Lee Adama. His expression is neutral, but Laura sees his eyes search the public area until he finds her.

The Council makes slow progress through the items listed on the Order of Business—government, Laura remembers, was never a swift affair. It's odd, she thinks, that Lee's experience of leadership must be so different to her own; for most of her tenure as President, she had no Council or Cabinet, initially because none of the Colonial government survived the Cylons' attack, and later due to the state of emergency which had been ongoing while the Fleet fled in search of safety. It's good to see the mechanisms of government restored, if necessarily on a reduced scale.

Several of the Representatives are obviously curious about the presence of the former President in the public gallery, and keep aiming uncertain glances in her direction. Laura only gives them small, encouraging smiles in return, and gives nothing away.

"Item ten," Lee says at last, "a motion to be tabled by Commander Adama of the Colonial Fleet."

The door opens again and one of the Stewards ushers William into the hall. Like his son, he looks around to survey the public gallery; unlike Lee, he does not let his gaze rest on Laura long enough to meet her eye.

He takes his place at the empty seat at the table reserved for those who have business to bring before the Council and addresses them formally. "Representatives," he begins. Then, to his son, "Mr President."

Slowly, William takes off his glasses. He has a page of handwritten notes in front of him, but Laura doubts he needs to refer to them.

"May it please the Council, I propose that the Galactica be released from its current duties with the purpose of undertaking a deep space exploratory mission to locate other human colonies and form alliances with them."

Around the table, the number of eyebrows shooting up is matched only by the number of jaws dropping. Under other circumstances, Laura would be amused.

"Surely, Commander," says one of the Representatives, sounding quietly appalled, "you are not advocating leaving the New Colony completely undefended."

"Haven is undefended now," William says. "The Galactica is not equal to the strength of attack the Cylons are capable of mounting. If they find us here in the nebula, it won't matter a damn if the Galactica is there to defend us or not."

The Representatives look horrified. So does Lee, although Laura suspects for a slightly different reason. "Even if the Council agreed in principle to this mission," he says, with a heavy emphasis on the 'if', "the Colony couldn't spare the resources needed to supply and crew the ship."

"As you well know, Mr. President, the Galactica was designed for long-term deep-space missions," William says. "Last year, with my permission, Chief Tyrol oversaw the conversion of two cargo bays to hydroponics facilities. With its reduced crew, the Galactica is now self-sufficient in food as well as water and air; there'd be no extra demands on the New Colony. And the ship can be manned adequately by less than 200 people." He looks at Lee. "I think we'd get 200 volunteers. Don't you?"

Of that, Laura has no doubt. There are already about fifty people who, like William, have made the Galactica their permanent home. People who, like him, belong in space. Kara Thrace. Paul Tigh. People who could never live on a world where the stars are permanently hidden.

"We can't allow the Galactica to leave," Lee says. "The impact on the morale of the Colony—"

"The morale of the New Colony is not my concern," William snaps. The atmosphere in the hall changes; both the Representatives and public have sensed that the exchange has shifted from a debate between President and Fleet Commander to an argument between father and son.

"It may not be your concern. It is mine," Lee replies. He looks, suddenly, every inch the President. William, by contrast, looks merely old. Defeated.

He really thought he might win, Laura realizes. Until this moment, he actually thought he might win this.

He belongs in space, she thinks, with his ship. Just as she and Lee belong here, on this new world. Neither side will ever completely understand why the other will not, cannot, change.

She stands up, her stiff leg making her deliberately slow. "May it please the Council."

"The Council recognizes Laura Roslin," Lee says. "The floor is yours, sir."

"The Galactica," she says, "is an old ship. It was an old ship even before the Colonies were destroyed. Some of us here may even remember the decommissioning ceremony."

That prompts a ripple of wry smiles around the hall. As if any of them are likely to forget that day.

"The Galactica was old then, and it's older now. Even with continuous repairs and maintenance, the ship may have as little as ten years left before it's no longer capable of undertaking a deep-space mission."

"That is not necessarily—" William begins, but Lee raises a hand, and he falls quiet. The floor is not his.

"The President has spoken of the morale of the New Colony. Surely the greatest boost possible to morale would come from learning that we are not the only humans left in the galaxy? The Galactica is the last ship we have that's still able to go and find out; before much longer, it won't be able to anymore. The decision is no longer mine to make but, Representatives, if it were—I would let the Galactica go. And wait and hope and pray it returns with new allies."

She sits down again. William and his son wear twin expressions of surprise and shock; that was not the speech either of them expected her to make. It wasn't the speech Laura expected herself to make, either.

It's good to know she can still surprise people. Most of all herself.

The debate lasts for the rest of the afternoon, and long into the evening. As the arguments continue, the number of people in the public gallery grows, as more and more people hear about what is being discussed.

By the time the Representatives finally vote, there is standing room only in the hall, and Haven's single moon is glowing hazily in the matte black sky.

The Council votes in favor of William's plan by nine votes to three. The President's vote is one of the three.

***

Two weeks later, at the end of the Changeover, William packs his small bag and takes the last shuttle back to the Galactica. It would be nice to say that Laura's dwelling feels quieter, or emptier, without him, but the truth is that he has been so busy since the Council approved the Galactica's mission that they didn't spend as much time together during his stay on Haven as Laura would have liked. But in the brief periods they did spend together, William was more animated, more enthused than she has seen him for years. Since they came to Haven, in fact.

"Lee hasn't exactly forgiven me yet," she said to him as they walked arm-in-arm through the settlement on his last night on the New Colony.

"He's stubborn," William said.

Laura's breath was cold; it formed misty puffs in front of her as she spoke. Her leg hurt, but she was too content to let it bother her. "I wonder who he got that from."

"His mother," William replied, deadpan, and she laughed. Then, more quietly, he said, "Why did you change your mind?"

She inhaled, feeling the bitter rush of cold penetrate her lungs. "I haven't."

William was silent after that, and with a sudden pang Laura knew that if she had given him another answer, his next question might have been to ask her to go with him. He wouldn't ask it, now. And she wouldn't ask him to stay. Instead she drew him closer to her and, hooking her arm around his neck, pulled him down and kissed him. His skin was cold and rough, his mouth warm and soft.

"Come back," she whispered afterward. "Just make sure you come back."

***

  
It shouldn't feel any different, but it does. The mission sanctioned by the Council was to be a year long. The Galactica will be back by the next Changeover, and Laura tells herself it's no longer than they would have been apart anyway, most likely. But, try as she might, she can't convince herself entirely. It's the nights when she makes herself a cup of red root tea and drinks it at the window of her dwelling that she feels it the most; her eyes drift up from the little cluster of houses in the settlement to the featureless sky above them. The Galactica used to be there, invisible but present—now it's gone, and Laura feels the absence more keenly than she thought she would. For the first time, she misses being able to see the stars in Haven's night sky. If there were stars, she could pick one and pretend it was the Galactica's next destination. If there were stars, she could make a wish on one.

At last, she thinks she understands why William couldn't give up the sky and the stars, not even for her.

The winter is a harsh one, the most severe they've endured since the New Colony was founded. Well-insulated pipes freeze, and in spite of the best efforts of Olwen Starkey and his team, there is no running water anywhere in the settlement for weeks.

Laura keeps the fire in her dwelling constantly stoked, but the cold seems to creep in, under the door, through the walls, piercing her skin and reaching down into the marrow of her bones. She feels it begin to inhabit her, and she hates the feeling—it reminds her of what it felt like to have cancer, to have to share her body with a malignant, occupying force. No matter what she does, she cannot get warm.

It's her leg that betrays her in the end. Walking down the steps of Lee Adama's dwelling after an evening spent eating and talking and—finally—putting the last of the coolness that has lingered in their relationship for too long since she spoke up in support of his father in front of the Council, Laura slips on a patch of ice, and her bad leg refuses to bend quickly enough to stop her falling. She goes down at an unlucky angle, and breaks not only her leg, for the second time, but her arm as well. Old bones are brittle.

It is the middle of Haven's winter, and the daylight hours are short. By the time Laura has spent several weeks in bed, swaddled in blankets but unable to keep warm by moving about, she has caught a chest infection which defies a course of drugs to become full-blown pneumonia. The doctors want to move her to the settlement's infirmary, but Laura protests so vigorously that they have to back down, fearful, perhaps, of making her condition any worse than it already is. And there is no doubt that she is gravely ill; Laura can sense death beginning to stake its cold claim on her, just as it did in the darkest days of the cancer.

She speaks little, sleeps as much as she can, and when she wakes it is often to see Lee sitting at her bedside, quietly keeping this last vigil with her.

And then, one day, she wakes from a fitful and restless sleep and sees it is not Lee Adama who is sitting next to the bed. It is his father.

She can't speak—just breathing is an effort—but she smiles at him. Maybe it is William; maybe it's not. Maybe the Galactica's mission has been a resounding success, and that's why the ship has returned so much sooner than expected. Maybe this is just her mind's way of making these last few days and hours easier.

He is holding her hand in his. It feels reassuringly warm, and real. In his other hand, he is holding a book. Laura strains to see the title on the spine, and when she doesn't recognize it, she guesses it must be one from his collection, on the ship.

William must see her eyes looking curiously at the book, because he says, "I always meant to bring more of them down for you. I should have—I should have done that. I'm sorry."

She smiles at him again. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter at all.

William opens the book at the first page, and starts to read to her.

  
**4\. Weapon**

  
She is in a white room with a bed and a chair and no windows. There is a room, which is white, with a bed and chair and no windows, and she is in it. She lies on the bed in the white-walled room where there are no windows; the only other piece of furniture is chair. She sits on the chair in the windowless white room and looks at the bed.

She woke up here. She can't remember being anywhere else. Maybe there is nothing else, nothing outside this room. Maybe she's going insane. Maybe she's already gone insane.

"Hello?" she says to the empty air. "Hello?"

***

"Hello—hello?"

Laura's voice is a barely a whispered rasp as she leans closer to the microphone of the shuttle's comms link, straining to project enough volume for the dying apparatus to pick up her distress call. The atmosphere scrubbers stopped working an hour ago and the air is turning sour. Every breath makes her want to gag.

"Mayday—SOS—mayday. This is the shuttle—LX-115. Position is—" She checks the navigation computer and reads the string of numbers and letters displayed on its dying screen. It's gibberish to her; it may mean something to whoever hears it.

If anyone hears it.

"Mayday, mayday. This is shuttle LX-115 calling—calling anyone in the Colonial Fleet. Please, if you can hear me—I don't know what happened, there was an explosion—the pilot's dead, life support is failing—please, if you hear this—"

She feels dizzy, sick. She forces the last words out.

"This is President Laura Roslin. If you receive this, please help me."

The comms link hisses and crackles for a few seconds more, then dies. The emergency lighting dims completely, leaving Laura in complete darkness. With a sense of something which is almost relief, she relinquishes her grip on the side of the chair which she's been using to support herself, and slides down on to the shuttle's hard metal floor.

She hopes that no one will come.

  
***

  
For four days, no one comes.

She is alone in the white room. She paces, she shouts until she is hoarse, she bangs her fists on the walls until her hands are bruised, and finally she collapses on to the bed and falls into a blank and dreamless sleep.

When she wakes up, there is a tray sitting on the floor by the locked door, with food and water on it. She eats it—if they wanted to kill her they must have better ways to do it than by poison—and waits. Later, she sleeps again, and when she wakes, there is food, again.

On the second day, she decides to stay awake until someone comes. It seems her captors do not intend to let her starve, but neither do they intend to let themselves be seen. She will make it impossible for them to achieve both objectives.

There is no clock in the room, and she has no watch or changing shadows to use to measure the passing time, but when she begins to feel sleepy she makes herself walk up and down, talks to herself, hums tunelessly.

She still falls asleep.

She wakes up lying on the floor. There is a tray sitting on the end of the bed.

By the third day, she has realized that they have some way of knocking her unconscious when they want to. Are they pumping odorless gas into her cell? She can't remember feeling woozy or dizzy before passing out.

To stave off boredom, she sets herself a series of mental exercises: works out prime numbers less than one thousand, calculates the number of days between pairs of dates, derives anagrams from a list of random words. It's only when she tries to think of anagrams of her name that her mind shudders to a sudden, panicked halt.

Her name. She cannot remember her own name.

And then the gaps in her knowledge about herself are suddenly cavernous, gaping, unavoidable. Desperately, she tries to think of her date of birth, her job, whether she's married, if she has children, who her parents are or were, and finds nothing. Even trivialities—her favorite food, whether she prefers skirts or pants—are empty entries in her mind's register. She is as blank as the white-walled room.

She curls up on the bed, shaking.

On the fourth day (it may not be the fourth day—she is losing track of time) she wakes up to another bland meal and another plastic tumbler of tepid water left on a tray on the floor. And something in her shatters.

She lifts the plate from the tray and hurls it at the far wall. Food splatters on to the white surface; something that might be a blob of reconstituted potato begins a slow slide downward. The plate is plastic, and merely bounces with a clattering sound.

"Whoever you are," she says, "whatever you want, you can come and talk to me in person. I'm not going to eat again until you do."

And then she sits down on the bed, to wait.

Two more periods of drugged sleep and two more thrown plates later, a door opens where there was no door before.

***

The trail of red sparks trace their way through the shuttle's hull, opening a door where there wasn't one before.

Laura blinks stupidly as she watches the sparks sputter and die in the oxygen-poor atmosphere. Oh, she thinks: They came. The thought has no emotions attached to it. The part of her which is still thinking seems to be suspended some distance above her body, and everything feels remote and inconsequential. It's hard to follow through thoughts to their conclusions, actions to their consequences.

The glowing sparks complete the outline they've been tracing and reach the point where they first appeared. A final shower of lighted embers and a rectangular section of the shuttle's hull falls inwards. Light floods into the compartment, and Laura winces—her eyes have grown used to the darkness. A shape—a human shape—enters the shuttle through the new door.

Hands touch Laura's face. They are soft and warm, and the sensation is so acute that it draws her consciousness back down from wherever it was floating and into her own skin.

The hands belong to a woman. A very beautiful young woman. She smiles at Laura, and her smile is filled with compassion and happiness and love. So much love.

The beautiful young woman says, "Hello, Laura."

***

"Hello, Laura," says the man in the doorway.

He enters the room, accompanied by another man. The difference in their ages is marked—the man who spoke is much older than his companion—but there is more to mark them as similar than different. They are both are dressed in gray-colored uniforms, and they share a rigid military bearing.

Laura, she thinks. Laura? Who's Laura?

And then it hits her, because it's so obvious. So obvious, but she didn't know. She's Laura; Laura is her name.

They know her name. They know who she's supposed to be, and she doesn't.

And now, for the first time, she's scared.

***

The beautiful young woman smiles again, and Laura feels afraid.

"I'm so pleased to meet you, finally, Laura," says the beautiful young woman. "I can't begin to tell you how much I've been looking forward to this. How much we all have."

"What do you want?" Laura asks.

***

"What do you want?" Laura demands. She tries to focus on turning her fear into anger. Anger is something she can use, control. "Where am I? Why are you holding me prisoner?"

The younger man holds up his hands, in a 'slow down' gesture. His expression is conciliatory; he seems almost apologetic. "Please," he says, "try not to be anxious. You're not a prisoner." There's a note of distaste in his voice when he pronounces the last word, and Laura guesses that the truth is she is a prisoner, but the younger man isn't happy about it. She wonders why.

"You've done something to my memory," she says accusingly.

The men exchange a glance and, for a moment, neither speaks. The younger man's expression is pained, but it's the look on the face of the older man that troubles Laura more. He looks haunted.

She can't begin to guess why, but both men are deeply uncomfortable talking to her. It's the only advantage she has, and she decides to press it home.

"Answer me, dammit!"

The older man looks at the younger one. "Wait outside, Lee."

"I don't think that's—"

"That's an order," the older man says. He doesn't raise his voice or even look at the younger man.

Lee goes, and the door closes behind him. When they are alone, the older man reaches down and picks up an apple from where it rolled under the bed. He examines it, apparently to determine if it's still edible. Then he buffs it on the sleeve of his uniform jacket and holds it out to Laura. "You haven't eaten for eighteen hours. You must be hungry."

She stares him down defiantly. "I already told you. I'm not eating until you give me—"

"—Answers. Yes. I'll make a deal with you. If I answer any question you want to ask me, truthfully, then you'll eat. Agreed?"

Laura looks at him skeptically, suspecting some trick. Then again, she has nothing to lose here. "Who are you?"

"My name is William Adama. I hold the rank of Commander in the Colonial Fleet. My ship is the Galactica." He holds out the apple again.

She hesitates, then takes it from him. She is very hungry. She takes one, careful bite, chews and swallows. The apple's flesh is a little bruised in places, but it's sweet, and it's good. "What's the Colonial Fleet?"

"The Galactica, plus the 48 other ships, mostly civilian, that escaped the destruction of our home worlds by the Cylons. Does that word mean anything to you?"

Her mouth is full of fruit, so she shakes her head.

"They're a race of artificially intelligent androids. We created them because we thought we were ready for the responsibility of bringing another sentient species into existence. We weren't. They fought us, and they destroyed us. There are very few of us left now."

Adama raises a hand and wipes it across his brow. Now that she has the opportunity to study him up close, she sees he has the grubby weariness of a man who hasn't slept properly in far too long. "What does this have to do with me?" she asks.

Adama says, "Six weeks ago, we launched a raid against a Cylon base, with the objective of capturing a particular piece of their technology. The same technology that allowed them to defeat us."

"A weapon?"

"Not exactly. The Cylons we created were wholly artificial constructions. Somehow, they developed the ability to integrate biological matter into their design. They're now able to create Cylons that look human. Cylons that are human, according to almost any test you could subject them to."

Interested in spite of herself, Laura says, "And these human Cylons were perfect spies. They infiltrated. Sabotaged. That's why they won."

He nods. "The raid was successful. What we found when we examined the technology we stole from them was that they have developed a kind of cloning and imprinting technique that allows whoever uses it to select only certain elements from the genetic structure of a human being and grow a perfect copy of that individual. But the brain tissue itself is altered as the clone is growing so that it is sensitive to certain wave emissions generated by the Cylon collective consciousness. At least, that's what our scientists tell me."

She takes a final bite of the apple. It's just a core now. A fragment of something—an old story about an apple, and knowledge—floats through her mind, but like everything else she knows, it is rootless and without context.

Adama is still talking. "The base we raided and destroyed was remote; we knew it would be some time before the Cylons realized what we'd taken. We had an opportunity to go on the offensive. To strike back. After spending so long running, it was an opportunity we could not afford to let go."

For a moment, his tone changes; he sounds almost earnest. But she can't tell if he wants her to believe this, or himself.

"Do you know what a Trojan horse is?"

She open her mouth to snap at him, of course she knows what a Trojan horse is—

—But the words dry up in her mouth when she realizes, with a sudden, wrenching horror, why he's asking her.

She nods, and whispers, "An infiltrator. A prize the enemy will claim, and not realize their mistake until after the damage has been done." The acidity of the apple on her empty stomach makes her feel nauseated, and she has to swallow hard in order not to gag. She looks Adama in the eye and tries to keep her voice was shaking as she asks, "Why does the cloning process damage the subject's memory?"

"It doesn't," he says. "We took a tactical decision not to copy your personal memories."

"Because that's the plan, isn't it? You're going to let these Cylons take me. So you can't risk allowing me to have any information that might be useful to them. Any information at all." She takes a deep breath, fighting the sheer, blind urge to scream denial, to lift her fists and pummel him until she makes him tell her the truth and not this stream of lies and untruths.

It is the truth. He is not lying to her. She doesn't know how she is so sure, but she is.

"And what's the surprise inside the package, Commander? What do the Cylons get when they unwrap me?"

"A disease," Adama says. "You're as good a fake as they are—they won't initially identify you as an artificial construction simply because they have no reason to suspect you're anything other than what you appear to be: a human being. They'll take you to one of their bases for interrogation. At that point, you will be—" he hesitates, before choosing a word: "—activated."

"Activated?"

"It's the same process they've used in the past with their own infiltrators. When a sleeper agent receives an activating signal, the part of the brain sensitive to Cylon wave emissions begins to receive and transmit. As soon as we activate you, they'll know you're like them, but by then it'll be too late. The waves you transmit will be corrupted by a powerful, self-perpetuating algorithm. A kind of mental cancer. It will spread slowly, but it will spread. And the effects will be devastating."

"You're going to use me to commit genocide."

"It's no more than they tried to do to us."

Adama half-closes his eyes, as if he is finding even looking at her painful. Is it possible, she wonders, that he actually feels guilty about this monstrous plan? No—he's clearly a hawk, a bitter old general who lost a war and is living now only for revenge.

"I will not be part of this. I will not be your tool, and you cannot force me—"

"I can," Adama says. "And I will." He doesn't raise his voice, but his words chill Laura to her heart. She is not a person to him; she is a construction, a tool of war. Something no different to the spies and fifth columnists who undermined and eventually destroyed his world. "If you will not co-operate willingly, we will drug you and make you. You will not undermine this operation. I will not allow it."

"You said you'd answer any question I asked, truthfully."

He nods.

"Who am I a clone of?"

Adama is silent and she knows, instinctively, this is the one question he didn't want her to ask.

"You're laying a trap for your enemies," she says, reasoning out loud. "So you need bait. Tempting bait, because this is your best chance—maybe your only chance—to do real damage. So I must be someone they want. Someone who would have a lot of information they could use. Someone powerful."

And then the strangest look passes over Adama's cragged face. She thinks, just for a moment, that she sees him smile. "You're a very smart woman," he says, and there is no condescension in his tone at all, only admiration, and something else she can hardly name.

"Who am I?" she asks.

"You are President Laura Roslin."

She draws in her breath sharply, feeling a rush of unexpected and intoxicating hope. "Let me speak to her."

"That will not be possible."

"Dammit, you have to let me talk to her. I can't believe she feels any differently about this crazed plan of yours than I do. Unless—" She stares at him, suspicious. "Unless she doesn't know anything about it. Is that it, Commander? Is this some kind of military black ops?"

Abruptly, Adama turns to go. "This conversation is over."

She reaches out, grabs his arm with all her strength. Surprised, she throws him off balance, and manages to force him to turn around again to face her. "This conversation is not over! You have to let me talk to her. I have to talk to her—I have to—"

He grabs hold of her wrists, locking his hands around them and holding her flailing arms harmlessly away from his face and body. Her initial burst of strength is fading, and she thrashes limply, ineffectually fighting back sobs. When at last she has expended all her energy, he helps her, with surprising gentleness, back to the bed. She sits on its edge and takes long, shaky breaths.

"I won't beg," she says. "Whatever else, I won't sink to pleading. But—if you have any decency, any humanity at all—you'll let me talk to her."

"She's dead," Adama says.

She closes her eyes.

"She had cancer. So do you, although it's in a much less advanced stage. She died shortly before we captured the cloning device. We've been covering up her death, because we suspect the Cylons have spies among us. They will capture you and they will believe that you are her."

She feels numb. She wishes she could feel sorrow for this woman she never knew and never will, this woman who she is and yet is not.

"So she didn't know about the plan. She didn't give her permission to be—used this way." She lifts her head, looks straight at Adama. "She wouldn't have."

He looks back at her, posture ramrod-straight. "The circumstances were exceptional. The potential strategic advantage outweighed the moral objections. The decision was mine alone."

"Then may the gods forgive you," she says. "I know I won't."

Later, armed men come and march her to the shuttlecraft whose guidance systems have been locked on to a deserted part of space and engines sabotaged. They tell her that the dead body wearing a pilot's uniform is a mechanic who was killed in an accident several days ago. They ask her to send a distress call, and to make it realistic. She agrees, because it is clear there is nothing she can do, now. Nothing at all.

As the shuttle takes off, guided by the autopilot, she finds herself picturing the way Adama's face changed when she told him she would not forgive him. The way it seemed to crumple from the inside, as if he was wearing a mask which had somehow come slightly adrift. His expression had not changed significantly, and yet there was a world of sadness in it, and grief.

All he said was, "I'm sorry, Laura. I am so very sorry."

***

The beautiful young woman hauls Laura on to her feet, supporting all her weight. "We have so much to talk about," she says. "I can hardly wait."

But Laura isn't listening. As she drifts into oxygen-starved unconsciousness, she is still thinking about the last thing she said to Adama, and the last thing he said to her.

"I'm sorry," she whispers. "I'm so sorry."

  
**5\. Politician**

"...wanted to bring the weekly summary report from the Geminon Traveler to your attention. There've been another five incidents on the ship, including one which almost led to a fatality. Captain Marlo says it's getting ugly over there, and he's asking for further assistance to keep the peace. He also mentions—uh, Madam President? Madam President, would you like to take a short break?"

Laura blinks slowly. She must have drifted again. This is important, she reminds herself. This matters. But it's hard to focus when half of her brain is soused with drugs and the other half feels like one huge bruise.

She makes herself look directly at Billy and smiles at him, although she suspects the expression looks more like a rictus on her gaunt face. "No, no. I'm fine for a little longer. Go on."

Billy looks uncertain, but diligently picks up the report he's read and summarized for her so that she doesn't have to expend precious energy on the task. He continues, "Captain Marlo says that many of the problems on his ship are stemming from the inadequate accommodation and facilities. He says that they either need help to make the ship properly habitable, or some of the people on board have to be moved somewhere else in the Fleet."

Laura takes off her glasses and pinches the bridge of her nose between her forefinger and thumb. Before the Cylon attack, the Geminon Traveler was a cargo ship, essentially little more than a huge box fitted with a jump drive and a crew compartment large enough for ten people at most. For the past six months, its under-equipped hold has been home to over five hundred refugees from the Colonies—five hundred people forced to live on top of each other, with no access to proper washing facilities, without even any way to pass the time, except to speculate who among them might be a Cylon agent. Boredom and fear make for a volatile mixture.

"Do we have anywhere else to put them?"

Billy flips through the file he maintains of current information on all the ships of the Fleet. It depresses Laura that a complete record of humanity and its total resources can now be fitted into a single, dog-eared binder. "Most of the ships are at the upper limits of their oxygen recycling and mass tolerances."

"We could..." she waves a hand vaguely, and wishes it were easier to concentrate. "We could run a shuttle service to the other ships, and let people use their facilities in shifts."

"It would tie up every non-combat small transport vessel in the Fleet," Billy says. "I mean, we could do it, but not for longer than a day or two."

"And the work required to improve conditions on the Geminon Traveler?"

Billy shrugs helplessly. "It's on the list. But so are the repairs needed after the last Cylon attack, the upgrade to the Agamemnon's atmosphere recyclers, the work on the Morning Star's jump engine..." He trails off; the list is long, and it is already far too familiar to both of them. "There's something else."

From the tone of his voice, she can tell it's not going to be a good something else.

"Tom Zarek is on the Geminon Traveler right now. He cited 'personal reasons' as the purpose of journey on the flight manifest, but I don't think there's any doubt what he's really there to do."

No; there is no doubt at all. Tom Zarek is on the Geminon Traveler this very minute, meeting its passengers, listening to them, no doubt recalling incidents from his own incarceration which mirror the hardships they face. She can almost hear him as he expresses his deep sympathy for her: Yes, he is saying, it is an unfortunate time to be sick, but at least the President has the comfort of knowing medical resources are available to ease her pain—that arm looks painful, sir, was it injured long ago? Two months, you say? And no treatment yet? If the President were here, if she could see you, I'm sure she would take action right away. But she's too sick to leave Colonial One. Too sick to do what needs to be done. Too sick to care.

"He's there," she says bitterly. "I'm not."

"You can't be," Billy protests.

"An invisible leader is no leader at all," she says. "The only way we're going to survive this is by understanding that we're all in it together. The moment those people on the Geminon Traveler—or any ship—start believing in ivory towers, everything will fall apart. And Tom Zarek is encouraging them."

As she finishes speaking, she feels a warm trickle on her lip, and tastes the saltiness of blood at the back of her throat. She reaches for the tissues she's never now without, and tips her head back, waving at Billy to leave. There's no point in trying to continue with this until the nosebleed is over. Another wasted half hour, valuable time stolen from her by the disease. And she knows she has little time left to lose.

***

Three days later, she collapses while washing in the tiny bathroom which adjoins her state room. One moment she's standing, sponge in hand, attempting to wash herself in a basin's worth of water—the ship was designed to be a short range commuter shuttle, and has no showers anywhere on board—and the next she is lying on her back on the cold, wet floor, watching the blood from another nosebleed seep along the grooves between the tiles.

She struggles to get up, but can't. She doesn't want to call for help, but the decision is made for her when Billy bursts through the door: he was working in the offices on the deck below, heard the thump from above and guessed straight away what must have happened. He's smart.

He is also embarrassed, because Laura is naked and bleeding and has the body of a fifty year old cancer patient. There is a moment of pure comedy, as he stammers and blushes and apologizes and—almost literally—dances on the spot, torn between the equally powerful desires to help and to flee. She can see compassion and discomfiture colliding in his features to produce an expression of utter mortification.

She holds out her hand to him and makes sure to meet his eyes as she says, "I'm having a little trouble getting up. Do you think you could help me?"

To Billy's eternal credit, he does. She is too weak to stand, so he carries her back into her stateroom. He cleans her up and dries her and then, because Laura can still barely raise her arms, he dresses her. It is humiliating and uncomfortable for both of them; when she feels his hands fumbling with her bra clasps, Laura wants to cry. But she doesn't. Instead, although her mouth still tastes like blood and she feels faint, she keeps up a constant patter of light conversation, asking him about his life back on Caprica, the girl from the Galactica he's seeing, anything to take his mind off the task at hand. At first his answers are strained monosyllables, but by the time he is helping her on with her jacket, he is talking to her almost normally.

She is good at putting people at their ease. It's one of the essential skills of being a politician, and Laura is a very effective politician.

Much later, when she is lying in her bed, trying to sleep, she cannot stop thinking about how it felt to be naked and helpless. Her face burns and she does cry, but quietly so that Billy, asleep in the next compartment, will not hear her.

  
***

The first indication that something is badly wrong comes in the form of a flash of light from outside the stateroom window which wakes Laura from her drugged sleep. Billy rushes to the porthole and peers out into the darkness of space. "What is it?" she asks blearily from the bed where she is spending increasing amounts of the day. "Cylons?"

"The Galactica would have issued an all-ships alert," Billy says, shaking his head in confusion. "Looks like an explosion—maybe the Vipers took out a raider? No, it's too big. There's a lot of debris—" Suddenly his expression clears, then floods with unmasked horror. "Oh frak. Frak."

"What?"

He turns around, facing into the stateroom again, the window behind him. "The Geminon Traveler. It's gone."

Behind him, through the toughened glass, Laura sees a chunk of twisted metal which until just a few seconds ago was part of the Geminon Traveler's hull hurtling toward them. She opens her mouth to speak, but what warning is there to give?

The voice of Colonial One's captain rings out over the speaker system: "All hands, all hands, brace for impact, brace for impact, this is not a drill—"

The ship shakes, and the last thing Laura hears is the scream of air venting into the vacuum.

  
***

"When it became clear to Captain Marlo that the rioting on the Geminon Traveler was out of control, he contacted the Galactica requesting military assistance to subdue the mob. He expressed a clear belief that a mutiny was under way and that the safety of the entire ship was under threat."

Commander Adama delivers his report in slow, deliberate tones. The stateroom is perfectly silent as he speaks; no one seems to want to meet anyone else's eye. If anyone present finds it incongruous to hold a meeting this grave around the bed where the President is propped up on pillows, they show no sign of it.

"I took the decision to dispatch a squad of Colonial marines to assist Captain Marlo and his crew in regaining control of the ship. When the marines boarded the Geminon Traveler, they reported that the mutineers had taken control of the several areas of the ship, including the aft section where the engines were housed. I made it their primary objective to re-take the engine room."

"With or without prejudice to civilian lives, Commander?" Laura asks. She is tired, wishes this were over, and hates herself for it.

"With prejudice," Adama says. "As an action of last resort, but—with prejudice."

Colonel Tigh, standing next to the Commander, says, "Madam President, mutineers are not civilians anymore—"

Laura holds up her hand. Tigh falls silent.

Adama continues, "While we have not established the exact sequence of events which led to the destruction of the Geminon Traveler, it seems likely that in the course of the fighting an energy weapon was discharged in or near the jump drive itself, de-stabilizing the reaction chamber and causing an explosion which destroyed the ship."

"How many people?" Laura asks.

Billy answers. "Five hundred and seventy two on the Geminon Traveler. Twenty nine fatalities on other ships in the Fleet due to damage caused by debris from the explosion. Three people with serious internal injuries, not expected to survive."

"Why," Laura asks, "was I not informed of the escalation of the situation on the Geminon Traveler?"

"Captain Marlo requested assistance directly from the Galactica, and I judged that the issue was one of Fleet security and therefore fell under military jurisdiction," Adama says. He hesitates. "In addition, it was imperative to act quickly to stop the mutiny. The decision to send in the marines had to be taken immediately. You were—unavailable."

She was drugged unconscious, not fit to make any kind of snap decision. He is sparing her by not saying it explicitly, but he doesn't have to; it's perfectly clear to everyone here how sick she is.

Adama says, "I bear ultimate responsibility for the sequence of events which led to the destruction of the Geminon Traveler. I am willing to offer my resignation as Commander of the Fleet."

No, Laura thinks. Ultimate responsibility is hers, and no one else's. And the worst part—the very worst part—is that fatigue has sapped even the energy she would need to feel guilt. Another six hundred people dead, and all she feels is tired. Tired and hollow.

"Don't be ridiculous," she tells Adama. "You're not resigning. That's the last thing we need now."

Billy clears his throat. "There's also the matter of the vote of no confidence."

Adama looks surprised, and Laura realizes that in the confusion of the past hours, he hasn't yet heard.

"Tom Zarek has proposed a vote of no confidence in my leadership," she says. "The law requires it to be held within eight days. I will almost certainly lose it, which will force an election. He will be President within the month."

"That would be a disaster," Adama says.

Tigh expresses his feelings more directly. "The man's a frakking idiot."

Laura exhales heavily. "He's anything but, Colonel. His timing is perfect. If I remain President and lose the vote, there will be an election which he will win. If I resign now, there will be no vote, but that won't matter because my resignation will look like a public admission of culpability, and again there will be an election which he will win." She looks around the room. "Checkmate."

Adama says, "Zarek is an ideologue. Survival requires pragmatists."

The discussion has drained her, and Laura knows her meager reserves of strength are almost gone. She tries, surreptitiously, to lean further back on the pillows. She is too tired for this, and a small, petty voice in her head resents having to deal with all of this when she is sick. She is sick, and all she wants is to be looked after. But she is President—still, barely, just—and she is supposed to be the one who looks after everyone else.

Except she can't, anymore.

***

Adama says, "I still think there's a good case for arresting Zarek again."

"Then we'd have a civil war on our hands," Laura points out.

"If he becomes President, we'll have one before long anyway."

They are eating lunch—or Adama is eating lunch, and Laura is pushing food disinterestedly around the plate on the tray she is balancing on her lap as she sits up in bed. These lunchtime appointments suit both of them; she is most alert in the middle of the day, and he finds it easiest to make time to get across to Colonial One during the Galactica's day shift. Now that she is effectively a prisoner on board Colonial One, these meetings are the one thing Laura still looks forward to. Even though her health has deteriorated, the Commander's attitude toward her has not; she still finds him brusque and remote, but these qualities have, perversely, made him easier to talk to as she has become sicker. She can speak freely with him, and doesn't feel she has to spare him anything.

"Whatever I do, we all lose." She shakes her head tiredly, and wishes she still had the ability to analyze problems the way she used to. "I can't resign. I can't not resign. I've given my cancer to a whole society."

"While you're alive, you're showing those people that it's possible to keep going, no matter what. That's what we need. Not Zarek's bread and circuses."

Bitterly, she says, "I can't help thinking the most useful thing I could do right now would be to die."

"Defeat is never useful," Adama says.

But that's a soldier talking, and in politics, Laura knows, the rules are different. Sometimes you have to lose in order to win.

She says little for the rest of the meal, and she spends a long time by herself after he leaves, thinking.

  
***

  
"I need to know how long," Laura says.

The Galactica's Chief Medical Officer looks at her. "How the frak would I know?"

Laura wonders if a surgical removal of the bedside manner is a prerequisite for joining the medical corps, or if it's merely recommended. "Take a wild guess. Just for me."

The CMO stubs out his cigarette—after six months, he must have the only stash left in the Fleet—and shrugs. "Eight weeks if the new drugs I've put you on work. Four if they don't. Two if you're really unlucky. Ten minutes if the Cylons pop up and nuke us before lunch."

"I'm in a lot of pain," she tells him. "Is there any way you can increase my medication? I need to be able to focus right now."

He hesitates, and for a moment she thinks he's going to object. Then he nods, reluctantly, and Laura wonders if he has orders from Commander Adama she doesn't know about. "You're already almost maxed out, you know," he says, handing her a little blue bottle. "Think of these as your option of last resort. One only, and I mean _only_, not less than twelve hours apart."

She takes the bottle. It rattles heavily in her hand. "Thank you."

***

  
She lies on her back in the bed, because even sitting up tires her out more quickly, and the few extra minutes of useful consciousness are precious to her.

"The rioting?" she asks Commander Adama. The vote is only three days away.

"Spreading," he says from his seat at the side of the bed. "Our resources are spread thin trying to control it."

Laura blinks; she is too hot underneath all these blankets, but she lacks the energy to throw them off and, besides, it would be undignified to do so in the middle of a formal meeting with the Commander of the Colonial Fleet. Especially since she is dressed only in a nightgown. The drugs are playing hell with whatever internal systems regulate her body temperature—either that or, her own personal theory, her body is burning off the last of its stored energy, like a dying sun. Her skin is clammy with sweat, and her hair is sticking to her forehead.

So when Commander Adama reaches out and gently brushes her hair off her face, the cool relief she experiences is so blissful that it takes a moment for her to register surprise.

She stares at him, and he pulls his hand back, so that he is sitting exactly as he was before. For a brief, mad moment, she wonders if she has started hallucinating.

No—there is a simpler, more obvious explanation. She's amazed she didn't see it earlier.

"You've done this before."

"Yes." He pauses. "My wife."

"I'm sorry," she says, and she isn't sure whether she's offering sympathy for his loss or apologizing for putting him through it all over again.

"I've had reason to be grateful," Adama says, "that she didn't live to see this."

"I sometimes wish—" She stops, takes a breath, then makes her confession. "I sometimes wish I hadn't."

"Yes," he says again, and in that one word there is a world of understanding, and comfort.

"I am a very good politician, Commander," she tells him. "A pragmatist."

"I know."

"The first rule of politics is that any situation can be used to your advantage. You have to learn how to read the board, how to choose which pieces to play. I've been distracted, and self-pitying, and I forgot that. Zarek didn't."

It's the most talking she's done in days, and the effort tires her. Adama waits while she gathers her breath and her strength to continue.

"I'm going to die. That's a given. But, in the end, it's just another piece to play."

Adama is staring at her, concerned but uncomprehending.

"If I resign, he wins. But Zarek made a mistake. The vote of no confidence is in me, not in my government. If I die in office, the vote can't go ahead. Power passes to the Vice President, and the groundswell of sympathy following my death will make a vote of no confidence in him a much less sure proposition. Zarek won't risk it, and the new President will have a period of grace until the end of what would have been my term." She closes her eyes. "It will buy you the time you need."

Underneath the blankets, the little blue bottle is light in her hand. It feels practically weightless, just like her.

"You'll need to speak to your CMO when he performs the autopsy," she says. "But I'm very sick. No one will ask hard questions. No one else knows."

There is understanding in Adama's face now; understanding and deep sadness. But Laura knows that he's not going to do anything foolish, like call Billy or the doctor. He's a pragmatist too.

She feels a sense of accomplishment, as if she has achieved a long-held goal she didn't even know she had. Perhaps she has—she is, has been, above all else, a politician, and by this decision she has made her death a political act, and discharged her duty of care to what remains of the Twelve Colonies.

"Is there anything I can do?" Adama asks. His voice sounds oddly distant, as if he is drifting further away from her. Or maybe she is drifting away from him.

She can't see him anymore, but she smiles anyway, and hopes that he sees.

"Comfort me," she murmurs.

She is still smiling at the end.


End file.
